Odd HIN question

[Alan]

Came home from a month on the road to find, in my held mail, a letter from Inspector Clouseau of the California DMV, who's got way too much time on his hands, to the effect that my hull identification number "does not conform to the standards outlined in Title 33, Section 181 Part C of the United States Code of Federal Regulations. As such it is considered as an invalid HIN."

Dum da dum dum duummmm...

I did figure out the problem pretty quickly - molded into the rear of the hull, in the center of the transom in the correct location, is the correct hull number, proper format and everything. After the hull number there appears a hyphen (or maybe a dash) and the letter D, which isn't part of the hull number but has been appearing on the registration renewal forms for the 15 years I've owned the boat.

One might reasonably ask what took them so long, but Inspector Clouseau proceeds in a stately manner, I guess.

Anyway, does anyone happen to know what the extra letter indicates?

[GreenLake]

Not sure. General info on the HIN can be found online, not sure whether anyone has special knowledge of what manufacturers did for the DS.

[Alan]

Thanks, GL. It's an O'Day Daysailer II for sure, 1980 model for sure, manufactured in December for sure. I'll wander through the internet and see if I can find anything. If I'm not back in a couple of weeks, send the Coast Guard.

[GreenLake]

Will do!

[Alan]

Well, that was easy. Thanks to Rod Johnson of Sunbird, I found the answer right here on the forum, here:

viewtopic.php?t=742

Turns out the "-D" indicates Daysailer, and was used after the 9,999th boat was produced. The link above includes a detailed explanation of why this all happened.

[SUNBIRD]

OOPS! I guess I had already answered! <GRIN!> OH WELL!

Real Simple answer!
The "D" stands for........ DAY SAILER
O'DAY ran into a problem after building the 9999th Day Sailer, there wasn't room to add the 1 for Class# 10,000 so they added the -D onto the HIN. From the start of the 12-digit HIN requirement in Noveber 1972, until they built the 9999th Day Sailer, the HIN format worked, XDYDccccMyym (or for a while: XDYDccccmmyy) XDY for O'DAY, D for Day Sailer, cccc for the Class#, and either Myym (where yy = last 2 digits of Model Year and m = code for month) or mmyy (where mm = number of Month, and yy = last 2 digits Year).
So, officially, the HIN for my 1979 model is "XDY10201M79E", although it says "XDY10201M79E-D" on the transom. My 1979 model was built in December 1978 and a 1979 model.

Try leaving off the "D" and it may go through?